


First Light

by WKitsune



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra, Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/F, Firebending & Firebenders, Kind of divorced from the main stories, New types of bending, Non-Graphic Violence, Set post-ATLA, Sozin's Comet, We'll see about canon characters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:42:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27491401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WKitsune/pseuds/WKitsune
Summary: On the day of the Comet, the war ended, and the world changed forever. On the same day, far away in a tiny village deep in the Fire Nation, a young girl saw a strange light, and her life began to change. Years later, the light returns and great events are once more set into motion.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Female Character





	First Light

**Author's Note:**

> I don't really know what this is or what this is or where it's going, but let's find out together. Admittedly, I'm not exactly tuned into the greater trends of the ATLA fandom, so maybe this isn't the kind of thing y'all go for. At any rate, I hope someone can manage to enjoy this!

On the day of the Comet, there was a light. It should have been supremely difficult to notice it on that day. The sky was afire with celestial power and promise. It was all anyone could see. The war was so far away, but with the Comet burning the sky orange, the villagers could feel a small part of the history that was unfolding. Miles and miles distant, a war was ending, though they knew not how. They could have no part in it, and yet every eye was locked on the horizon, watching the fireball sail across the heavens, as if enough eyes could shift the tides of time. It was then that the light shone, a beacon on the opposite horizon. It peeked over the jagged hills, proclaiming its meager existence to what little of the world cared to see. It drew no attention. It was a small thing, at least compared to the rage of the Comet. No matter how bright, it was formless and irrelevant. Nothing hinged on its existence. It would not alter the course of nations, as the Comet would. It lasted only a few minutes, and then it was simply gone, blinked away as if it had never been. On that day, no one should have noticed.

And yet, someone had. To a baby in mother’s arms, the path of fire arcing across the horizon was a terrifying, unknowable thing. It was so far beyond understanding that the child could not stare at it for any length of time. Instantly, she turned away with a sharp wail. This alarm drew only a vague, half-hearted shushing, equally unworthy of attention. So rebuked, the baby quieted. She turned and twisted, searching fruitlessly for comfort. Every other body in the village was motionless, their work and cares forgotten. It was then that the baby’s eyes found the light. The glow grabbed her mind instantly, and her head locked in place to see. The sight lasted only a second. By the time she had fully focused on the glow, it had vanished. There was nothing notable about the moment, and certainly not for a child with no way of knowing what was happening. Reasonably, an incident such as this should have been immediately forgotten.  
But the child had seen, and the light was burned into her mind forever.

LATER

The light never left. Though the beacon itself never again appeared on the horizon, not a day went by when the image of that light was not in the girl’s mind. Most days, it was nothing more than a mirage in the furthest reaches of consciousness, barely an afterthought. But sometimes it was bright and demanding, seeming to appear above the hills once more. Whenever the girl caught this sight, she would look up quickly enough to induce dizziness, hoping speed was enough to catch the beacon, as if it were a timid animal. She never did. When her gaze found the hill’s crest, there was never anything amiss. All she could do was frown, return to her business, and wait to see what presence the light would have the next day.

She had yet to tell anyone about the light. The right time hadn’t presented itself, she figured. By the time the girl was old enough to think the event strange, and to understand what else had happened that day, the world was changing. Even in a village stuck in the deepest reaches of the Fire Nation, it was inescapable. The adults talked of matters far beyond her young mind: new Fire Lords, struggling colonies, and governmental reforms. Though the girl knew not what these things meant, they were obviously important. It was clear, even to a child, that the adults would not have time for stories of odd lights. She would have to wait, for to her mind, there had to be something of dire import to the beacon, there had to be. But as she grew, the proper moment never presented itself. What she would come to learn was normal life slowly returned to the village. There was work for a growing girl to do, work that left little time for fantasy. Slowly but surely, the light became a fact of life for the girl. Eventually, she felt no real need to bring up the light any more, nor even to pay much mind to the glow, ever-present in the corner of her vision.

115 AG, SEN-KAI VILLAGE

That morning, the light had barely been visible to Usagi. She had seen it, of course, she always did. From the moment she opened her eyes in the morning, it was there, taking up some part of her awareness. That part might not always be large, but it was still a sliver of her mind devoted to nothing other than knowing that somewhere there was a bright, inexplicable light. Sometimes, but not that morning, Usagi thought she could see the faintest hint of a glow from inside the thin wooden walls of her family’s house. Once outside it would lurk in her periphery, no matter what. She had learned to live with it. That morning though, it had barely registered as anything more interesting than a common trick of the sun. If Usagi had total command over her memory, she would have realized this was the faintest the light had ever been. But she did not have access to these memories, nor did she particularly care to. Usagi was at the zenith of her sixteenth year, and she had more important things to worry about than a phantom glimmer.

From there, the day had proceeded uneventfully, because what else was it going to do? In something of a mixed blessing, there was little work to do. On the one hand, daily chores in a small village, especially one removed from the rapidly-developing world, were often quite arduous. Farming, weaving, hunting, house repairs, water-gathering: all these things required a great deal of physical and mental labor. A full day of work left even the young and strong drained. On the other hand, such tasks were one of the few things that reliably filled Usagi’s days. She didn’t have many friends. Not having acquaintances in such a small village was impossible, but people she was truly close with, people she could confide in without a second thought...well, she had long since decided that was a lost cause. Thus, she preferred to work as hard as possible. Too hard, some said. She didn’t mind.

When she ran out of work, she turned to her bending. She had discovered that she could firebend when she was six. This was a matter of delight and excitement for the young girl, but hardly surprising. Plenty of people could firebend. As she grew older, her father had encouraged her to practice the art. She suspected this was an attempt to ingratiate her with the other children through sheer awe, but it didn’t really work. Still she persisted. Not out of necessity; there was no real ‘need’ to punch fireballs out of one’s hand in a quiet village, after all. Rather, she found going through the flowing motions, largely self-taught, to be supremely calming. Feeling that primal, elemental energy run through her body in warm waves, the burst of power from her knuckles at the apex of a punch, the spiral of flame with a sweep of the leg: Usagi could lose herself in all these motions with startling ease. She could practice the forms for hours, if need be, repeating them over and over until the sun fell from the sky and their power by necessity waned. She liked to think she had developed a modicum of skill.

She was practicing in this way when the beacon returned. Usagi staggered mid-punch, almost losing her balance. At first, she didn’t believe her eyes. Whatever else she had seen, whatever sensations had tingled in her brain, this had never happened before, not since the day of the Comet. Surely, this was yet another phantasm that would disappear in just a few seconds. But it didn’t. The beacon glowed, bright and strong in the night. Usagi looked around, in hopes to find someone who could possibly confirm the sight. This was in vain, for she always practiced bending away from the village, where she couldn’t bother anyone. She was alone, by design. She considered running back to find someone. This idea was swiftly discarded. Who could she find that would listen, much less believe her? Besides, Usagi was struck with the sudden fear that if she looked away from the beacon, it might decide to disappear and never return. So, she would have to trust in it’s reality, at least for the time being.

That left the question of how to respond. Should she get closer? Run away? Attack...whatever it was? Surely it was important, but how? This was all rather beyond Usagi. Matters of mysticism and strange phenomenon were best left to others, the adults said. The beacon refused to help. It shone passively, seemingly nothing more than a bright light atop a small, nearby hill. And yet, there was no question that she would respond. To do otherwise had never even occurred to Usagi. The need to react was rooted deep down in her psyche, too deep to understand, too deep to ignore.

That didn’t tell her what to do, of course.

With no other plan or hints, Usagi took a step forward. The hill in question was not too far away. She had snuck off there, a couple times, when she had worked up the courage to seek out the light. She had yet to find anything useful. But who knew, any day could be the one. So, she walked. She did so slowly, though, legs trembling almost imperceptibly. There was no reason to believe that anything especially interesting was about to happen, and yet Usagi couldn’t shake the feeling that whatever she was walking towards was not to be taken lightly.

At first there was nothing, save the slowly pulsing beacon. It was by far the brightest point in the growing night, drowning out even the torch-fires from the village, but otherwise silent and secretive. Twigs crunching underfoot and squirrel toads croaking from nearby woods were the only meaningful sounds. Usagi had already walked a good distance, and no matter how deep her sense of foreboding was growing, she couldn’t hold out hope forever. It was getting late, and one of her parents might come looking before too long. She would give it just a little longer, she decided, then turn back. There would be a little embarrassment over chasing a mirage, but it wouldn’t be the first time.

Then, all of a sudden, there was something. A person stood in the middle of the field. Usagi stopped in her tracks. She blinked a couple times, as if to confirm reality. The person had most certainly not been there before, and there was no way they could have snuck in without Usagi noticing. The land around Sen-kai Village was mostly open fields for a good distance in every direction. The closest thing to real cover was the forest in the distance, and it was still far from where the newcomer was, much too far for the stranger to have quietly emerged from. Usagi shook her head clear. However impossible, the person was there. From where Usagi was, it was hard to tell much about the person. They faced away from her, staring up silently at the sky. They wore almost austere clothes, little more than loose robes. Short hair hung to just over their shoulders. Usagi swallowed her fear, and approached.

“Um, excuse me?” Usagi asked. It hardly seemed an appropriately dramatic thing to say, but it was what came out of her mouth. She flicked a fire to life in one of her hands for light. “Are you okay?”

After a couple moments, the stranger made a small noise of surprise, as if they had only just heard Usagi, then turned around. 

Again, Usagi paused. She was by no means well traveled. She had barely been to the more populous parts of the Fire Nation, let alone outside of it. She had heard all the stories about people from all the countries of the world starting to live together, but that was far away from Sen-kai village. Supposedly, the Fire Nation had once had colonies in other parts of the world. The adults didn’t talk about that, though. Usagi, and everyone she had ever known, looked like nothing more than prototypical Fire Nation people.

Even so, Usagi could tell there was something...off about the newcomer. They were a young girl, seemingly no older than Usagi. Her skin was pale past the point of normalcy, and her face almost expressionless. Grey eyes stared unfocused, as if they weren’t looking at anything in particular. Her short red hair was pushed back from her face and cut unevenly. The light-blue robes fit poorly, hanging off her shoulders. A small silver band curled around part of her right upper arm. Usagi’s firelight glinted off of two gold studs in her ears.

Usagi had always been told that there was a sort of vitality to her: bright blue eyes, brown hair that fell in long waves, tied behind her neck with two braids across her brow. Her face usually carried an easy smile. What few people she talked to, usually commented on her being energetic and happy. She took no small amount of pride in that, if nothing else. This girl had nothing of the sort. It was as if she was detached from her surroundings, or lacked real substance. Those grey eyes were looking at her though, or the next best thing to it. Usagi shook herself to focus again.

“Who are you?” She asked.

“Leune, I think,” the girl said. Her voice was slow and measured, like she was testing out the words.

“You...think?”

“I’m not sure,” maybe-Leune said. She cocked her head, thoughtful. “It’s a little hard to tell, sometimes. I can tell you later when I’m sure, if you’d like.”

“U-um, no, that’s alright,” Usagi said. She had no idea where to go with this conversation. “What were you looking at, anyway?”

Instead of speaking, Leune just pointed up towards the night sky. Usagi followed the finger to see the full moon looming large in the sky. Only then did she think to be confused by this. The moon wasn’t supposed to be full that night, was it?

Usagi didn’t get a chance to wonder about this mystery. Before either girl could say another word, another being appeared. This one was certainly not human. It looked more like a three-foot-tall floating crystal than anything else, but that was where any frame of reference Usagi might have ended. The thing’s facets came together in a way that played with the eyes, refusing to fully coalesce into a coherent shape. Something like a diamond, maybe, but with too many edges to really be called that. More geometric shapes floated in the space around the central mass, supported by nothing. The whole thing glowed with pale yellow light.

The crystal being had appeared from nowhere just as Leune had. One moment the space it occupied was empty, and then it wasn’t. Usagi recoiled away from the crystal-thing instinctively. She had absolutely no idea what it was. She had heard about spirits, certainly, but in reality this knowledge barely extended past the realm of fairy tales. Perhaps this was a spirit. Perhaps it wasn’t. Weren’t spirits supposed to be more...natural looking? Whatever the case, the crystal-thing was immediately, deeply strange. Usagi’s mind couldn’t fully accept it as real, no matter how much she stared. She took a few steps backwards, subconsciously. Primal fear tickled her senses. But Leune hardly reacted. She stood as still as always, staring at the crystal-thing, head cocked curiously, as if she expected it to do something.

She did not have to wait long. With no warning, the shapes around the crystal-thing started spinning in rapid orbits, producing a hissing whine that pained Usagi to hear it. A moment later, two of the shapes whipped out from the spinning mass, shooting towards Usagi almost too fast to see.

Only blind luck saved Usagi. She dove to the side, falling into a clumsy half-roll. The shapes slammed into the ground with incredible force, throwing up puffs of dirt and pebbles. The shapes stuck there, like glowing knives in a board. All color drained from Usagi’s face. The crystal was attacking her! She punched a hand forward, and a jet of flame burst out at the thing. It was a statement, more than anything: the fire stopped well short of the floating crystal but washed through the air with an impressive woosh, as if the crystal would be scared off like a common animal.

Quite the opposite, as it turned out. The whine intensified, stinging Usagi’s ears, and then more shapes lashed out from the spinning blurs. Many more of them, this time, buzzing out like a swarm of insects. Usagi just ran, panic hammering her heart and driving her legs wildly. She may not have known what those translucent shapes were, or what exactly would happen if they hit her, but she had no desire to find out. She ran with no plan or goal other than to get away. The repetitive thuds of the shapes hitting the earth behind her only encouraged this course. She risked a glance back. The crystal-thing was following her, zipping through the air with sharp, jerky motions, spitting more deadly shapes as it went. It was faster than the young girl, much faster. There was no way she could out run it. Fear seized her. She was no fighter. She was practicing firebending more for something to do than any real purpose, and certainly not to become a soldier or anything. But at that moment, she hardly had a choice. 

Running from a killer crystal-thing hardly made remembering even the most basic forms easy, though. Usagi pulled at half-memories, desperately searching for something useful. All thought proved elusive. The patter of shape against ground and the whine of the crystal-thing made it next to impossible to focus. Instead, Usagi just lashed out, turning awkwardly on one foot while whipping out the other in a spinning kick, trailing a wide arc of fire. The flame slammed into the closest wave of shapes hard, and the projectiles came apart with a sound like breaking glass. The crystal thing itself faltered, jinking back to avoid the fire. For a brief moment, the night sky was lit up by a riot of color, crimson flame mingling chaotically with the crystal’s pale illumination. 

Then the light faded, and with it passed Usagi’s moment of triumph. She couldn’t land the kick, and instead lost her balance entirely, falling to her back. She grunted at the jolt of pain. At the same time, the crystal thing recovered, resuming its inexorable flight towards Usagi. It came to a stop above her, shapes still orbiting with that distressing whine. It had not yet attacked again, but when it did there would be no way for Usagi to avoid it. But that wasn’t even the worst of it: all around her and in the distance, more of the crystal-things were coming into being with little flashes of yellow light. Three more surrounded Usagi, and almost a dozen others had appeared beyond, already moving towards the village. All had whining orbits of their own, and those closest to Sen-kai village were already starting to launch their projectiles. All together, the high-pitched noise was too much to bear.

Usagi had no time to react to this horrifying development, for the crystal-thing looming over her did so first. Though it had no face, it spun around, as if to look at something that had caught its attention. Usagi turned too, to see what had bought her another couple seconds.

Leune still stood in the middle of the field, entirely forgotten. Her eyes were closed in intense focus as she moved into a stance that resembled no bending form Usagi had ever seen or heard of. The strange girl drew her hands in a large, loose circle, pulling them in until they were almost cupped together in front of her breast. At the same time, one leg lifted up, bending so that the foot was flush with the other knee. Leune’s movements were slow, as if she were pulling her body through water. But in between her hands there was a shimmer of undeniable power. Suddenly, her arms shot out long, palms splayed outwards.

Then the stars themselves came down.

With a roar so deep and loud that it was barely a sound at all, colossal pillars of light streaked down from the heavens. From below, it looked as if the sky itself was casting an impossibly vast net upon the world. Usagi could only watch in terrible awe as the ferocious power descended. Each of the beams fell upon one of the crystal-things, consuming them utterly. For a few seconds, these pillars burned with awesome energy, rendering the attacking beings unseen. Leune’s attack went beyond sight, noise, or anything else: so overwhelming was the light and noise that it became an indistinct mass of sensation that Usagi’s being could just barely endure.

And then, just as quickly as it had begun, it was over. The pillars of light vanished without a trace. Usagi assumed that nothing could possibly have survived that, but the crystal-things were still there. Changed, certainly: They were all perfectly still, the orbiting shapes fallen to rest around the bases of the crystal-things like some sort of geometric flower. Their main bodies were far easier to look at, resembling normal shapes at last. Their glow, too, was different: instead of dirty yellow it was the color of pure starlight. Leune came out of her stance with the same deliberate motions, slowly bringing her hands together as if in prayer. As she bowed her head slightly, eyes still closed, the crystal things lifted up into the sky as one before vanishing into the dark.

“What...what was that?” Usagi asked, only just able to speak again. While this question hardly asked everything she wanted to, it was all she could manage. She had yet to stand up. She would get to that. Eventually.

“They were hurt,” Leune said, opening her eyes. It sounded like she was apologizing for someone. “They didn’t know what they were doing, so I healed them.”

“I see,” Usagi said. She did not.

Leune walked over to Usagi and extended a hand. Usagi accepted, and let the other girl help pull her to her feet. 

“Thank you for saving me. Us, I guess,” Usaig said. She was mildly disturbed it had taken her so long to thank said savior. Already, she could see torches lighting up in the village, and shouts of alarm rose up to fill the night. Leune just made a soft noise that was difficult to parse.

“You are looking for something,” Leune said. It was not a question or attempt at clarification. It was a statement of fact.

“That beacon,” Usagi said. She pointed at the hills. Thankfully, the beacon was still there. “Do you know what it is?”

“No, I am sorry,” Leune shook her head. “But I think I am supposed to bring you to it.”


End file.
